Mining Capitalism: The Relationship between Corporations and Their Critics by Stuart Kirsch (review)

The world history of mining is drama and disaster ridden. In this respect, the Ok Tedi gold mine in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is emblematic in terms of environmental destruction and degradation, social violence, and the complex legacies of the project’s promise of economic development and well-being. As Stuart Kirsch reminds us, “Ok Tedi was the first mining project approved by the postcolonial government of Papua New Guinea, which acquired its independence from Australia in 1975” (19). This book is about how that story turned into a bitter combination of ecological disaster, legal processes, and what Kirsch terms a failed politics of time and successful politics of space. “Although the Yonggom and their neighbors initially welcomed the mine and the opportunity it portended, they quickly became troubled by the impact on the environment and their subsistence practices” (34–35). Actually, the “colliding ecologies” (chapter 1) of local livelihoods and mining activity impacts resulted by the early 1980s in a devastating “micro-economics of resource curse” (30–33).

Mining Capitalism can be read at two levels. First, it is a story of mining disaster and indigenous resistance, which Kirsch follows in multiple places and arenas and of which he has been part (11), notably including his involvement in the Mines and Communities Network studied in chapter 6 (194–198, 258n3). Second, the book provides the reader with an analysis of “the dialectical relationship between corporations and their critics [that] has become a permanent structural feature of neoliberal capitalism” (3). A brief summary of the book’s narrative will be useful before commenting on the second level of reading. Ultimately, taken together the two readings raise interesting questions in terms of interpretation, ethnographic method, and the positioning of contemporary fieldworkers in local and transnational capital contexts.

The Ok Tedi story is told in the first half of the book from the indigenous point of view. This telling vividly exposes the strategy developed by mine-affected communities, or more precisely some of their leaders, to build alliances with activists, environmental nongovernmental organizations, and lawyers and to unfold networks beyond the limits of the local. At the same time, alliance building was a process of identity building—the translation of local populations into a global discourse of indigeneity. Kirsch shows that resources of publicness and law were mobilized through the campaign launched to stop the mine and the legal action they took against the Ok Tedi operating corporation bhp. This transnational “politics of space” (chapter 2) eventually resulted in two lawsuits (chapter 3). The first case was settled in Melbourne—the meaningful location outside Papua New Guinea already marked this a success—in 1996 to the benefit of the plaintiffs with compensation of about us$500 million and commitments to stop discharging tailings downstream in the Fly River. Actually, however, the victory was “incomplete” (109), as the infrastructures needed for tailings containment were insufficient and compensation payments generated much tension among mine-affected communities. A second lawsuit was filed in 2000 against bhp for breach of contract. The final verdict in 2004 was not to the advantage of the plaintiffs, and, “in the long run, the environment was also let down by the law” (122).

One interesting point in Kirsch’s tracking of the mining company into and out of multiple arenas can be found in the corporate evolution, which he characterizes as a process of mutation. What Ok Tedi peoples have been chasing across institutional and national boundaries is not a stable corporate entity but a mutant body: the Australian-based mining company bhp (Broken Hill Proprietary Company Ltd) until 2000; bhp Billiton after the 2001 merger with the Anglo-Dutch company Billiton plc; and PNG Sustainable Development Program Ltd (sdp), established in Singapore...